More And More Men Are Getting Plastic Surgery These Days - What Happened?

Across the street from Montreal's downtown convention center in mid-May, a bride and groom, accompanied by their best man and maid of honor, posed for a photographer. The men were decked out in tuxes with every hair plastered in place, and the women's makeup was painstakingly, breathtakingly perfect.

On the sidewalk, I watched an obese couple pass by, each holding a large slushee.

We are all flawed, men and women alike, and at the annual conference for the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the metaphors tend to write themselves.

On the fifth floor of the center, plastic surgeons from around North America take in talks and classes. Placards decorate the lobby area, describing the latest procedures: gluteal fat injections, teardrop breast augmentations, edoscopic eyebrow lifts with Before, After and the occasional During photos: bloody flaps of tissue pulled aside, revealing the fat and meat below.

The stereotype of your average plastic surgery patient is a Kardashian-esque celebutante, always seeking out the next new thing in facelifts, boob jobs and tummy tucks.

But even when it comes to boob jobs, that's not entirely accurate. More and more men are looking to become the best surgically enhanced version of themselves that money can buy, in search of procedures that range from necklifts to nose jobs to breast reduction (almost 25,000 for men last year, usually to treat gynecomastia, the benign growth of breast tissue in males). In total, over 1 million men sought out cosmetic procedures in 2014, an increase of 273% since 1997 (over that same time, women's procedures have increased more than 429%. Like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, you'd be well advised to go into plastics for a living).

One of the surgeons reaping the windfall of new clients is Miami-based Constantino Mendieta. With his jet-black hair, fashionable stubble, bright blue blazer and diamond tie-pin, Mendieta, who runs his own clinic, looks like the type of surgeon who appears on reality TV shows. Which is fitting, since that's exactly what he is, having been featured on The Doctors and Miami Slice. Mendieta is not just the president of the plastic surgery club for men — he's also a client. He's not shy about being the surgically-altered face of men's plastic surgery: He plainly states that he's had four liposuctions, fat grafts on his buttock, hair transplants, a nose job, and the fat under his chin removed.

“I worked out, I just couldn't get the body I wanted to, my genetics didn't allow me to develop that kind of shape,” he explained. “So I turned to liposuction to get rid of those fat cells that wouldn't go away.”

One of the procedures Mendieta champions is what he dubs the Adonis procedure, where he removes fat from specific areas (like the abs) and injects it into other specific areas (like the pecs or shoulders, calves or buttocks) to mold the body into that of a Greek god. Of the 10 to 15% of his practice that is male patients, 95% are there for this procedure.

The motivation for literally tearing your body apart and putting it back together? Like everyone told me when I had a year-long dry spell and was acting like a perennial Droopy Dog, confidence is sexy (and being sexy builds confidence).

“It's just generally to look better and feel better in clothes,” said Mendieta. “I think it's almost the exact same motivation I had. Imagine yourself when you were in the best shape of your life, how you felt, how you dressed, how you interacted with people. It's just completely different from when you're not feeling your best.”

Mendieta isn't alone. Grant Stevens, a surgeon in Marina del Ray, raised waves in the cosmetic surgery world when he marketed part of his clinic as a dedicated “man cave,” with leather chairs, flat screen TVs and a sports-bar vibe. (Though it's dubbed "ManLand," which sounds like a different kind of bar to me.)

But despite the increase in popularity, you might not know that Chad in the office next door didn't get that six-pack you could grate cheese with by doing crunches and leg lifts.

“Women in the old days were secretive about having plastic surgery, but over the last 10 or 15 years, it's no longer a taboo subject,” said Mendieta. “They wear their plastic surgery like an accessory or a proud shield. Men are where women were 15, 20 years ago. They're very secretive about what they're going to have done and almost don't want anybody to know. It almost feels like they're cheating or are going to be seen as less than a man.”

Mendieta is right — to me, at least, some surgeries do seem like a form of cheating, and a form that has risks, even if they are low (Liposuction has a mortality rate of roughly 1 in 50 thousand, but do you really want to be that rare corpse that is insanely toned?) Maybe it's a sense that a flawless body that came from a few grand instead of self-discipline in the gym and kitchen isn't fair. Or maybe it's that for years, we've judged women who got surgery harshly, and our screwed-up idea of equality is to expand that to the guys, instead of laying off the ladies.

Adonis was a Greek god known for his beauty, and sure, we can aspire to be like him. But if you're thinking of going under the knife to get pecs like Tom Hardy, remember: Adonis was gored to death by a wild boar.